


if love is king, who wears the crown

by Crollalanza



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Flower Crowns, Gen, Grand Prix Final
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 18:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crollalanza/pseuds/Crollalanza
Summary: “Second is seen as nothing,” Christophe had derided.“But that moment you glide onto the ice, that hush of the audience, and that expectation, isn’t that worth something?”“You speak as if you know. You used to skate?"Past tense. It still stung, even if it was expected.Minako knows exactly what it's like to be at the top of your game, and she remembers the descent just as clearly.





	if love is king, who wears the crown

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally written for the Yuri On Ice Ensemble zine. I wrote a Minako centric story because she's one of my favs and I think she needs a little more attention. And I also loved her interaction with Chris. :D

At times observing could feel like participation. To Okukawa Minako, watching the skaters as they swooped and leapt and span in a myriad of arcs and circles, she became so caught up, it was as if she were dancing again.

Dancing with gods who weaved spells as they gyred.

It was as if she were alive in the _best_ possible way, not merely existing from day to day, but vibrant and vital. The affirmation that Minako mattered, that she was more than a mere part of the Hasetsu landscape people propped themselves upon.

When Phichit touched his hand to the ice, her breath hitched. The enchantment broke, and now he wasn’t the bright young god, but Yuuri’s friend, the ingénue she’d sat down to dinner with. No longer a deity, however adorable.

“Aw, that’s a shame,” Mari said, shifting in her seat. She bent down, picking up the Japanese flags they’d made between them, and handed one over. “Fingers crossed, sensei, it’s Yuuri next.”

_Fingers and everything else_ , Minako thought. Her focus changed to something far more intimate, far warmer, not bedazzled admiration but the intense molten heat that this had to go right.

Yuuri skated a dream of a programme, yet she was too tense to enjoy fully. Too many nights and days had been spent imagining this moment, and following last year when the whole of Hasetsu had collectively held their breath through his Free Skate, she wasn’t sure she could deprive her lungs again.

“If you run up now, you could give him your flower crown,” Mari said, sniffling as she wiped away her tears. “World record for my little brother, I can’t ... I can’t believe it.”

Well, yes she supposed she could hand it to him but...

Yuuri had been a small snot-nosed, crying baby when she’d first met him. Heck on one horrendous occasion, she’d changed his nappy, and no one – not even a record holder - could ascend to god status after that.

“Or are you saving it for someone else?” Mari said, her voice a little sly.

Flower crown. Why on earth had she bought it? Impulse, she guessed. They’d always looked so pretty on Victor’s hair, but it wasn’t Yuuri’s style at all. He’d blush and stammer and push her away.  Besides, he looked far too taken up with Victor to notice anyone else. 

“Don’t think he needs it,” she murmured, not moving.

“Here’s Christophe,” Mari said sighing. “You spent time talking to him, eh, sensei?”

“It was nice to practise,” she replied vaguely.

Two nights before, they’d spoken in French, not deliberately excluding the others, but it had been a while since Minako had spoken the language, and Christophe had been so complimentary, then begged her for a few words of Japanese.

The tiniest of shared moments, but for all that Minako had seen a shard of sadness in his limpid eyes. His smile was wide, his style forever smooth, but there was a tiredness there.

“So young,” Christophe had said, not meaning, she realised later, to say anything out loud. His eyes had strayed from Yurio to Phichit and then Otabek. “So very young.”

“They overtake us,” she’d replied, waiting for him to register that she’d understood before continuing. “But what you’ve achieved, Monsieur Giacometti, will remain.”

“Second is seen as nothing,” he’d derided.

“But that moment you glide onto the ice, that hush of the audience, and that expectation, isn’t that worth something?”

“You speak as if you know. You used to skate?”

Past tense. It still stung, even if it was expected.

“No. I danced.  I still do,” she’d raised her arms in a balletic pose over her head, then lowered one, “but my audience now is a lot smaller and ... uh ... shorter.” Wistful, she’d sighed. “Perhaps I’m pathetic for resting on my laurels.”

“If you _have_ laurels, then what else should you do with them? You earned many?”

_The Benoix de la Danse,_ she nearly replied, but she wasn’t sure she could bear the confusion that would appear on his face, so she smiled instead and merely replied that she’d more memories than awards.

Back in the day, she’d been feted across Europe. Gala performances, royalty applauding her, a ballerina of such renown, the world threw flowers at her feet. But what she remembered the most were not the celebrations, but the bloodied shoes, the pain in her toes, the endless need to practice, practice, practise, to leap and spin and hover in the air, suspend the disbelief of the audience. To entertain because they _owned_ you, however highly prized you were.

But for all that, there was the nagging realisation that she’d given up too soon, that she could have had another year (or two or three or ...) another chance, or that maybe it would have been better to be carried off the world stage high-kicking, rather than leap away to her backwater before the others caught her.

 

“OH, he flumped that!” Mari shrieked, holding her hand to her mouth. “Poor Chris!”

“Flubbed,” Minako corrected, but mildly. She increased her concentration, only now realising just how much she wanted him to recover.

And he did. There was hesitation, and the odd misstep, but as the commentator said, _‘This was Chris’_ and he poured every facet of his personality into those four minutes.  And what did it matter if he couldn’t surpass others? For _that_ moment, _that_ recovery, that life force within him made Christophe Giacometti - if not a god, then a king in her eyes.

And a king needed a crown.

She pelted down the stairs to stand rinkside, her voice shriller than it had been for years.

But the stadium was erupting and she knew she’d been drowned out, overlooked as he bent to pick up some red and white roses and a Persian cat plushie from the ice.

What would he want with a flower crown? They were Victor’s thing, not his.

It was as he straightened up that something made him double take, and he scanned the crowd. Thus prompted, she screamed his name.

And he smiled.

He skated closer, the flush of exertion deepening to a pink as deep as the crown in her hand. Chris bent towards her, lowering his head in a theatrical bow to accept his coronation and she leant across, placing the flower circle on his golden curls.

“Merci,” Chris said, pursing his lips and then flashing her a slow wink, displaying eyelashes so long they should be classified a lethal weapon.

_A weapon of mass seduction,_ she thought and almost swooned.

Her heart still thumped painfully, and she longed to say something intelligible about never giving in, but then, as he turned away, waving acknowledgement of the crowd and their roaring applause, something inside her gave way. Christophe Giacometti was a god and a king, and who was she to break that spell?

“I thought if not Yuuri, then you’d save the flower crown for Yurio,” Mari chided.

“Ha, that brat would probably stamp it into the ice as being ‘far too Victor!’,”  Minako snapped. Then she snorted. “Of course he’d regret it a moment later and ask for another.”

“So why Christophe? You could have handed it to J-J.”

Minako pressed her lips together, watching as Altin appeared. So stoic. So strong. “His whole skating life Chris has been in Victor’s shadow, but now just as the sun appears, it’s shining on others, and his shadow’s lengthening as if it’s the end of the day. Giving him flowers will remind him that for that moment he conquered the crowd. I just hope he doesn’t rest on them. Not yet.”

“Huh?  Rest on the crowd?”

“No, the flowers, Mari-chan! Or rather the laurels...” She tailed off as Altin’s music began.

“That’s deep, sensei,” Mari replied, then hunched forwards, face in perfect concentration as the routine began.

Was it?  Would Mari understand? It would involve an explanation that could easily veer into melancholy, and today she didn’t want to feel that ache for her former glory.

“Pink suits him,” she amended, then laughed, keeping it light so they could delight in the rest of the final, sure in the knowledge that their boy had at least earned a bronze. Taking a leaf from Chris’s book, she gave Mari a wink. “And how the heck would I have got to J-J? His fangirls would have lynched me.”


End file.
